Solomon on Trusting God in Our Work

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“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.” Proverbs 16:3 (NIV)

All throughout Scripture, we are told that it is God, not us, who produces results through our work. 1 Chronicles 29:12 says “Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things.” Deuteronomy 8:17-18 reads, “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.”

In an age in which anyone can launch a business, write a book, or start a podcast, it can be tempting to think that it is our hustle that is producing results through our endeavors. As we will see next week, God commands that we hustle and uses our hard work to produce results through us. But as we enter into any new work, we must begin by recognizing the indisputable fact that results are ultimately being produced by the Lord.

In Proverbs 16, Solomon sets forth a sequence of trusting, hustling, and resting that should mark any endeavor we Christians pursue. In verse three of the passage, the wisest man who ever lived commands, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.” So before we hustle, we are to commit our work to the Lord. What does this look like, practically?

For starters, it looks like keeping verses like the ones above close to our hearts, there to continually remind us that it is God, not us, who produces results. Secondly, we commit our work to the Lord when we go to Him in prayer and verbalize our trust in Him. Finally, in addition to verbalizing our trust in God to ourselves and to God, it is important that we verbalize this trust to those around us. In a culture that celebrates the ability to “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” we Christians will be set apart in the world when we explicitly recognize that it is God, not us, who is responsible for producing results through our work.

But as we will see next week, trusting is just one piece of the puzzle. In order to be effective instruments in the hands of our Caller, we must hustle hard in our chosen work.